Not Lost in Translation

Dr. Kaga is the Director General of the Japanese National Institute of Mental Health at the National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry (NCNP). She is also our collaborator and the main organizer of the “Joint Academic Conference on Autism Spectrum Disorders” that Autism Speaks co-hosted December 1-3, 2011 in Tokyo, Japan.

She and her team of about a dozen junior faculty, post-docs and graduate students had been working feverishly preparing for the conference. In this first academic conference of its kind devoted to autism, Autism Speaks brought six leading autism researchers from the U.S., with expertise ranging from epidemiology to intervention, to share their work, including unpublished results, and to explore collaborative opportunities with their Japanese counterpart. Dr. Kaga’s team was charged with coming up with the right mix of presentations by Japanese and U.S. scientists that would ease productive exchange and interactions. From my own experience, this is easier said than done, especially with language and cultural differences. Plus, you never really know how well things will flow and gel until it happens.

Around the same time, Masatsugu Tsujii, Ph.D. and Teruko Ujita of Japan Developmental Disabilities Network (JDD-Net) were having similar jitters. Working together with Autism Speaks’ communications manager Danielle Yango and Alison Bradley, from our international PR firm BLJ, they were responsible for staging awareness activities throughout the three-day conference, concluding with an awareness event involving Yoko Ono. Ms. Ono is Autism Speaks’ Global Autism Awareness Ambassador and she kindly agreed to take time from her busy schedule to join many Japanese families and professionals to raise awareness about autism.

Teruko Ujita is a mom, and the Executive Director of JDD-Net. She is one of those super effective people who, no matter how chaotic things get around her, is always calm and ready to flash a big smile. Autism Speaks’ collaboration with the Japanese autism community really started about 18 months ago with a chance meeting between Dr. Tsujii and I at IMFAR 2010. So to say he was feeling the pressure to deliver is probably an understatement.

A couple of times during those tense hours, various people mentioned “Lost in Translation,” the cult Sophia Coppola film starring Bill Murray about feeling dislocated in the Japanese culture. Each time I muttered “shut up” under my breath, not wanting to be drawn into the whirlpool of anxiety around me.

In the end, we really didn’t have to worry. Or rather, maybe because all our wonderful colleagues obsessed so much over every detail, both the academic conference and the awareness event with Yoko Ono unfolded brilliantly. Both Japanese and U.S. researchers told me how much they learned at the conference, and how they plan to follow up and explore collaborative opportunities in areas like early screening to environmental sciences. I knew everything was going to be OK with the awareness event when right before Yoko Ono took the stage for an hour of inspirational remarks and TV and press interviews, she was smiling and clapping watching Salsa Gum Tape, a band comprised of individuals with disabilities, along with a packed hall of families and professionals performing a rousing interpretation of John Lennon’s “Imagine.”